Conventional wisdom in 2024 seems to dictate that the Covid-19 response was an overreaction, but that conventional wisdom is wrong. My analysis on the Royal Commission report and the response to it: newsroom.co.nz/2024/12/03/his…

🎶🎺2025 Public Health Summer School🎺🎶 Build your knowledge and skills! 10–21 Feb 2025 19 short courses, mostly 1 day Some in-person, some online University of Otago Wellington NZ 25% early bird discount until 19 Dec Find your course here: otago.ac.nz/wellington/dep…

I am *SO* sick of Facebook "refreshing" the page I have open, throwing it away. Is there no way to stop it? It’s a major UI fail. People have particular pages open because, duh, *they’re using them* LEAVE THEM OPEN FOR THE READER That’s not hard to work out is it?

This morning Uganda announced a new Ebola outbreak. The last time there was an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, the CDC worked with the WHO on helping end it. But now, the CDC can’t even talk to the WHO. I repeat, again and again, this is pure stupidity that will only hurt us.

Here’s one reason why we need World Health Organization (WHO). There is an outbreak of Sudan virus (a type of ebolavirus) in Uganda. They are trying to rapidly detect cases to prevent the new ones. Time is critical to stop an outbreak from growing into an epidemic. WHO helps speed things up.

Apparently we haven't dumbed it down enough for Rand Paul: Hepatitis B's primary transmission route is vertical (mom to child) HBV can transmit by bites or hygiene implements If a child gets HBV they have a 90% chance of getting chronic disease

Virologist Wendy Barclay: ‘Wild avian viruses are mixing up their genetics all the time. It’s like viral sex on steroids’ Always worth listening to ⁦wendybarclay⁩ ⁦Imperial College London⁩ theguardian.com/science/2025/f…

For those looking for public health datasets that seem to have become unaccessible: archive.org/details/202501…

Maryland variant update. The only real update is that it is still there. We detected it 3 more times in the last month, most recently Jan 9. x.com/SolidEvidence/… 1/

Happy retraction day! Fifteen years ago—that ghastly pile of utter bollocks by Mr Wakefield was retracted All kudos to Brian Deer 布莱恩-迪尔 for exposing Wakefield for his fraud #vaccineswork

Here's the thing: he knows that virus discovery isn't bioweapons research. He wants everyone to think it is to justify eliminating infectious diseases research for the sake of repurposing those funds for himself. This is a self-serving lie. Don't believe it.

The African Society for Human Genetics meeting is underway in Uganda with 400 participants, and a great line up of speakers and sessions. We are hearing of the great strides made in developing genomics capacity in Africa, but more data and training are needed! #AFSHG2025

Fancy that! Modelling shows that school closures in the emergency phase of C19 had a positive impact by reducing infections, hospital occupancy and deaths medicalxpress.com/news/2025-02-s…

If any PhD student working in computational biology is displaced by this most recent tumult and is looking for a new lab, I have room for one (or potentially two) PhD students in my group. Feel free to reach out via email.